


happenstance

by zhuzhubi



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Absent Parents, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Angst, Angst and Fluff, Child Neglect, Coming of Age, Gen, Growing Up, Growing Up Together, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, nothing graphic, platonic or pre-romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:34:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25941424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zhuzhubi/pseuds/zhuzhubi
Summary: Spencer’s littler than you, but he’s already in second grade. He tells you, “I was in kindergarten for a little bit, but Miss Campbell said I’m really smart so I went to a special teacher and she gave me lots of questions to answer, and then they told me I was moving classes. I liked kindergarten better because the other kids weren’t so mean to me. The second grade kids don’t like me because I’m littler than them.”He’s a bit of a sad kid, but it’s okay because you are too - your mom is mean because she drinks lots of smelly water. Your dad is nice, but he’s barely ever around anymore. 'Maybe he doesn’t like me anymore,' you think, 'I wonder why mommy is mean now and daddy doesn’t like me anymore.'You’re digging in the sand one day when you ask Spencer what he thinks. He replies, “My mommy loves me lots and lots, but sometimes her head doesn’t know it. Sometimes she gets confused and thinks I’m someone else, so she yells at me. Maybe your mommy just gets confused like my mommy does.”
Relationships: Spencer Reid & Original Female Character(s), Spencer Reid & Reader, Spencer Reid/Original Female Character(s), Spencer Reid/Reader
Comments: 7
Kudos: 89





	happenstance

**Author's Note:**

> also on tumblr @zhuzhubii

The metal of the playground equipment is so hot under the unrelenting Nevada sun. You can’t touch any one spot for too long, lest you burn your fingers, so you race through the monkey bars as fast as you can, going _ouch ouch ouch_ but having too much fun to consider stopping. 

Your hands slip and you tumble to the ground, falling to the sand and knocking the wind out of yourself. It’s so scary not being able to breathe - you try desperately to suck in a breath, but your lungs just won’t inflate. It makes you wish you had a mom that would come running and comfort you like all the other little kids, to kiss your scrapes and bruises and tuck you in at night -

“Are you okay?” a little boy appears in your field of vision, dropping to his knees beside you as you gasp for breath. You try to respond, but it just makes you panic more when you find you can’t speak. 

He furrows his brow and wraps his little hands around you and rubs circles on your back, babbling in the not-quite-a-whisper of a child trying to be quiet, “The ‘jungle gym’ was first invented in 1920 and patented by Sebastian Hinton. When kids - like us! - play on them, we’re strengthening the muscles in our hands, which we also use for tasks like holding eating utensils and writing…”

Once the breath finally rushes back into you, you don’t cry. You would have, if you were alone. But you spend your energy on examining the boy instead - his brown hair is short, as if it’s recently been shaved and is starting to grow out, and he’s wearing black-framed glasses that make his eyes look huge. His hands aren’t dirty like you know they would be if he’d been playing in the sand or on the jungle gym. You wonder what he’s doing at the park if not playing on the playground - you can’t think of anything else a little kid might like to do.

“Spencer?” a tall, blonde woman with long wavy hair calls from somewhere behind you. The boy looks up just as the woman pulls him to his feet, scolding, “Spencer! You can’t just run off like that, I thought someone had taken you!”

She’s already starting to pull him away, but he looks back and says, “I gotta go!” as if it’s not obvious. You wave at him, then pick yourself up and decide to go play in the sandbox instead - no chance of falling there!

_You were still a child then, so your thoughts were fickle and fleeting. But you distinctly remember thinking, “His mommy came outside in her pajamas!”_

…

You see him again after that. Sometimes he comes with his mom - who alternates between being hyper-attentive and forgetting about him entirely. Usually his mom pulls him away in the end, snapping words about strangers and danger and kidnapping - never mind that you’re just as little as he is.

Sometimes he comes alone - just like you do! You like those times the best because you can play uninterrupted for hours and hours and hours. He teaches you a game called ‘chess’ and you teach him how to hang upside down, laughing at how red his face gets when all the blood rushes to his head. One time he brings a huge puzzle, and you two spread out all the pieces on one of the picnic tables and giggle as you put it together (okay, it’s mostly him putting it together. But you helped too - it was a team effort!)

Other times he comes with his dad, though those times are much more less common. You don’t like those times because his dad won’t let you play together - he makes Spencer play catch and swing a baseball bat, says _you can’t play with girls_ and _come on, play ball with daddy._

Spencer doesn’t like those times either, you can tell even though he never says it out loud. He doesn’t smile when he’s playing with his dad like he does when he’s playing with you - you wonder why his dad wants him to play ball so bad when it’s so obvious Spencer isn’t having fun. 

You ask Spencer and all he says in response is, “I dunno,” which isn’t something you’re used to hearing from him - you’ve grown accustomed to him rambling on and on and on about anything and everything. You think he must know even more than your first grade teacher - and she knows lots of stuff!

Spencer’s littler than you, but he’s already in second grade. He tells you, “I was in kindergarten for a little bit, but Miss Campbell said I’m really smart so I went to a special teacher and she gave me lots of questions to answer, and then they told me I was moving classes. I liked kindergarten better because the other kids weren’t so mean to me. The second grade kids don’t like me because I’m littler than them.”

He’s a bit of a sad kid, but it’s okay because you are too - your mom is mean because she drinks lots of smelly water. Your dad is nice, but he’s barely ever around anymore. _Maybe he doesn’t like me anymore_ , you think, _I wonder why mommy is mean now and daddy doesn’t like me anymore._

You’re digging in the sand one day when you ask Spencer what he thinks. He replies, “My mommy loves me lots and lots, but sometimes her head doesn’t know it. Sometimes she gets confused and thinks I’m someone else, so she yells at me. Maybe _your_ mommy just gets confused like _my_ mommy does.”

“What about our daddies?” you ask, and he freezes, his lips pulling into a tight frown.

“I think my daddy’s gonna go away,” is all he says.

_Back then, you didn’t realize what he meant - your dad went away all the time for work, but he always came back (even though it wasn’t very often)._

…

Spencer’s hair is long now and he barely smiles at all, even when he’s with you. He goes to school with all the really big kids, and you know he thinks it’s frightening - _I like learning,_ he says, _but teenagers are scary. They’re not very nice, and I know it’s because of hormonal changes and incomplete development of the prefrontal cortex, but still._

One day he shows up to the park and doesn’t say anything. He’s ten years old and you two have long stopped building sandcastles, but he heads right over to the sandbox and runs his fingers through the sand, idly toying with a plastic shovel someone’s left behind. You’re eleven and you don’t know what to do - don’t know how (or if) you can make it better for him - so you just plop down next to him, kicking off your shoes and burying your feet in the sand.

After a while, he says, “I wasn’t enough to make him stay,” and then pretends like he said nothing at all, digging and digging and digging as if he can bury his problems that way.

 _You didn’t reply, and it’s something you’ve always regretted. It’s because you thought the same thing about_ your _parents -_ I’m not enough for them _. You know now that it wasn’t your fault, not at all. But you didn’t know that back then, and so you didn’t know how to tell him it wasn’t_ his _either._

…

You glance out the window before bed one night and he’s standing outside, looking shaken. His shirt is on backwards and he’s missing his left shoe, and you just _know_ the bullies got to him again -

 _Even all these years later, you haven’t been able to come up with any kind of rationale that makes sense - how the_ fuck _did a bunch of seventeen and eighteen year old practically-adults think it was okay to do that to a pre-teen half their size? You wonder how they went home to their younger brothers and sisters and looked them in the eye having just beat up a little kid_

\- You lead him inside and sneak him past your mother where she’s passed out on the couch, practically pulling him because he’s almost frozen in his daze. You help him right his shirt and pull off his lone shoe, throwing it into your closet so he doesn’t have to look at the reminder of it’s lost mate.

You end up on the roof together, laying back against the tiles and gazing at the desert stars, masked a bit by the light pollution from the strip. You’ve been reading a book on stars and constellations because you know he’s been interested in astronomy lately, so you start talking facts because it’s what he likes. You know it’ll help bring him back from wherever he’s gone.

It does eventually bring him out of it, out of his trance. He doesn’t tell you what happened, just turns to you and says, “thank you,” in a barely-there whisper. 

You stay up with him the whole night - _at least inattentive parents are good for one thing, I guess_ \- chattering about gaseous giants and supernovas and black holes, eventually transitioning to ghost stories once you’ve exhausted your knowledge. He laughs at one point, and that’s when you know he’ll be okay. Maybe not now, but one day.

_You still don’t know what happened to him that day. You can guess, of course you can, but you try not to - he hasn’t told you, which means he doesn’t want you to know._

… 

You’re sad when he goes to college, but you think _it’ll be okay, he’ll be back soon for winter break_. _I’ll see him in a couple months, that’s not too long_ (okay, it’s long, but he’s so excited to go, and you’re not about to taint his excitement by telling him you don’t want him to go).

But then your dad returns from a business trip abroad and has a blow-out screaming match with your mother. It ends with him packing bags for the both of you and telling you -

_Get in the car_

_What? Where are we going?_

_Sweetheart, I love you and I’ll explain later, please just get in the car_

\- that it’s time to go. You never see your childhood home again after that - you stay in a hotel for a few days before he drags you to the airport and onto a plane headed across the country. 

Richmond is very different from Vegas - the east coast trees stretch taller than you’ve ever seen before, their leaves flush with fall colors. He enrolls you in the high school nearest to your new home and that’s that. Now you live in Virginia.

_You like Richmond, actually. The only thing you liked about Vegas was Spencer, and with him away at college things just weren’t the same. You only wish you had a way to contact him, but you didn’t and so that’s how it was. A new life and new friends all the way across the country._

…

It’s spring break of your junior year and your dad - who’s much more of a dad now that the divorce has gone through. Turns out it was actually your _mother_ he didn’t like, not you - offers to take you traveling for college campus tours. You’ve managed to push Spencer out of your mind -

_That’s a lie. You thought about him all the time, however much you tried not to. It was painful, remembering him and being unable to contact him_

\- but he’s the first thing you think about when you think of college - after all, him leaving for Caltech was the last time you saw him. And so you know immediately where you want to go - you don’t think you’ll get into Caltech (nor do you really want to go there - it’s a little too niche to really suit you), but your dad doesn’t need to know that.

He books a flight for LAX and says, “We’ll rent a car and drive down to Pasadena - we can look at other schools in Los Angeles while we’re there, if you want.”

_You don’t even know if he’s still there - he definitely won’t still be working on his Bachelor’s. But he’s always wanted to go to graduate school, and Caltech is the perfect school for him. You hope desperately that he hasn’t decided to take his graduate studies somewhere else._

…

After the campus tour, you tell your dad you want to walk around alone for a while - explore, and all that. You wander aimlessly for a while before stumbling across the campus store and asking the cashier where the libraries are. He smiles and draws a little map for you, and you try your best to make sense of it, squinting a little as you walk. 

Eventually, you find one and realize you can’t actually go in since you’re not a student. You furrow your brow and loiter as you try to think of what to do, and the attendant narrows her eyes at you suspiciously.

“Do you need something?” she asks, breaking the silence.

You startle, sputtering before collecting yourself, “Um…does a boy named Spencer Reid ever come here? He’s sixteen with long brown hair? Oh wait, actually it might not be long anymore…”

Her eyes immediately brighten at his name and she replies, “Oh! Yes, Spencer’s here all the time - he’s just the sweetest young man! I can’t let you inside since you’re not a student, but I can go get him for you if you want?”

“Yes, yes! That’d be great, thank you so much! I’m (y/n), he knows who I am,” you exclaim, almost shouting at first before managing to hush your voice (you are in a library, after all).

She gives you a polite smile and disappears into the back, leaving you standing anxiously in front of her desk. You hear footsteps scurrying toward you and then - 

“(y/n)…,” he gasps, freezing in his tracks once he sees you, an unreadable expression building on his face.

 _Oh my god, it’s really him_ , you think, examining his new form - he’s grown at least a foot ( _he’s taller than me now, oh god that’s weird_ ), but kept his hair long. You notice he’s pulled the top half back into a tiny ponytail, which you’ve never seen him do before. 

All you can think to say is, “You got taller,” as you look on in amazement. 

“You didn’t,” he replies without thinking, immediately blushing once he realizes what he’s said. 

And you just laugh because it’s _true_ , and you can already tell he’s the same little boy who rushed over to you on the playground all those years ago.

…

You never lose contact again after that. You don’t end up going to college in California, but he’d acquired a cell phone at some point - the most basic flip phone he could find, you’re sure - so it’s easy to keep contact now. 

He ends up getting a job offer in Virginia a few years later, and it jars every time you remember he’s an FBI Agent. You move from Richmond to DC after completing your Masters, and remember with startling clarity how nice it is to live so close to him. 

There are hard times, of course there are. He makes the decision to commit his mother at eighteen, and is a mess in the aftermath. Your mother dies of alcoholism-related liver failure two years later - you haven’t seen her in years, so you’re really not sure what you’re supposed to be feeling. 

One night when you’re twenty-five Spencer won’t respond to your calls, and you learn it’s because he’s been abducted by a serial killer. You’re a mess until he’s back in DC and you finally lay eyes upon his battered form, almost in tears because you’re so relieved that he’s alive.

He pushes you away after and you’re not sure why - he’s always relied on you when things got tough, and you have no idea why this is different. You figure it out when you’re at his apartment one weekend and pull drugs out of his bag.

He’s furious and demands that you leave - practically pushing you out of his apartment. Before you can get a word in edgewise, he’s locking the door behind you and ignoring you as you bang on it, saying, “Spencer! Spencer, please don’t do this to yourself. I know you’re hurting, but there are other ways to deal with pain, just talk to me, please just talk to me.”

He ignores you, and one of his neighbors pokes her head out of her apartment and glares at you until you leave. He won’t pick up your calls for weeks after that, and definitely won’t let you back into his apartment. You’re just starting to consider ratting him out to his teammates when he shows up at your door, sweating and trembling and saying, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I snapped at you. I just - I can’t do this on my own.”

Withdrawal is hell for both of you, but things start getting better after that. He starts letting you in again, and each time he trusts you with something it sends relief dancing through your body.

He’s twenty-five and you’re twenty-six. You’re not sure whether or not the worst life has to offer is behind you or still yet to come, but you know it’ll be okay in the end - after all, you have Spencer Reid beside you.


End file.
